Top tips to overcome small business recruitment challenges

At this time of the year, many employees are looking for a fresh start and may be thinking about moving on to pastures new.

For large businesses and multinational corporations, this is nothing new, and most will have strategies in place to mitigate or prevent business losses as a result of employee turnover.

But for small businesses, sudden employee turnover is not so easily managed. The loss of employees can have a significant impact on business profits and productivity. For any small business in this position, recruiting the right people to alleviate these problems is essential, but it can be easy to neglect recruitment processes while the priorities are business and revenue growth.

For more information on how to overcome small business recruitment challenges, download our eBook and discover more about recruiting without an agency.

Consequently, small businesses can become reliant on their ‘best’ employees, but this can cause problems as when those individuals leave, a significant portion of the business’ resource is lost.

With this considered, small businesses need to have a recruitment strategy in place to acquire the right candidates, but this can be difficult.

In this blog, we’ll explore small business recruitment challenges and how small businesses can ensure their recruitment process attracts the right candidates as quickly as possible.

Challenge #1: Filling the gaps as quickly as possible

Large businesses can afford to dismiss or lose employees; they have a dedicated HR function and long-term recruitment strategy. Small businesses, however, do not have the time or resource to conduct large recruitment campaigns and therefore spend less time tailoring job ads in the push to hire people right away. The problem with this approach is that the chance of attracting the right candidates plummets if the role and incentives are not accurately described.

Tip #1

Rather than rush to hire new employees, small businesses should take extra time to get the right people. This means ensuring job descriptions and job ad templates are up-to-date and tailored to the specific job roles they are looking to fill. With these documents updated, small businesses can launch their recruitment campaign as quickly as possible and ensure they attract the right people.

Challenge #2: Ensuring employee fit

For any business, especially small businesses, employee fit is essential to ensuring a healthy workplace, low employee turnover and high productivity. However, finding the ‘best’ employees can take time and many small businesses might not be able to afford long-term recruitment campaigns. Also, for any small business without a dedicated HR function, identifying quality candidates is difficult as there is no strategy or process in place. The result is that small businesses end up hiring employees who do not necessarily fit in with the business.

Tip #2

Small business recruitment needs to be orientated around best-fit, not cost-effective. Instead of hiring the cheapest labour to save money, small businesses should hire people who have experience, natural aptitude, and share the same values as the rest of the business. Also, it is important to put a recruitment strategy and interview process in place to ensure the right candidates with the right skills are brought in for interview.

Challenge #3: Balancing business operations with recruitment

As small businesses typically focus on day-to-day operations, less emphasis is placed on recruitment – this usually results in inconsistent hiring practices and hiring the wrong candidates. Due to recruitment expenses and tight budgets, small businesses have no option but to train unsuitable candidates until they are able to support the team. Often, this costs more than holding out to recruit a candidate who is more experienced.

Tip #3

Whilst it is vital for any company to find the right candidates, small businesses need to get it right the first-time to keep their business running smoothly and to reduce costs. Recruiting software and fixed-fee recruiters can help small businesses to recruit high-quality candidates in a cost-effective manner. Fixed-fee recruiters can help to optimise job adverts to ensure they target and are found by a specific audience – and recruitment software can streamline the process, saving time and money.

Ultimately, small business recruitment needs to be more strategic and done with the business’ future and growth in mind. It is entirely possible and simply requires a little bit of investment.

If you want to find out more about recruiting without an agency, why not check out our free eBook?